"My dear brother, you have good stamina. You stay on where it happens ... You keep Old roads open by driving on new ones." -- Seamus Heaney, "Keeping Going"

Adam Perkins lists one reason he chose the University of Arkansas: to run for coach John McDonnell's famed Razorbacks. But the first year in Fayetteville was a struggle from start to finish for the former 4:07 high school miler, and by the end of his first spring he privately wondered if he had made the right choice.

Like more and more top preps, Perkins had come from a high school program with a highly technical coach who explained the scientific underpinning of every workout. McDonnell, on the other hand, "had more of the old-school mentality," says Perkins. "Whatever I give you, don't ask, just do it."

At the behest of McDonnell, who retired in June after leading the Razorbacks for 35 years, Perkins stayed in Fayetteville that summer and performed manual labor: He tiled floors, painted homes, and even built a rock wall. That last one "was the backbreaker," but in the end, he says, "I was overall strong."

Yet early setbacks in his sophomore harrier campaign again left Perkins wondering if he was in the right program. He started falling off in workouts; at a crossroads, he made a transformative decision one afternoon while running repeat miles -- a McDonnell staple -- not to worry about the "what" or "why" of the workout and simply submit to the training: "I just made up my mind, 'You're gonna stick behind [Arkansas standout] Josephat Boit and the frontrunners. You're gonna run the whole thing with them. I don't care how bad it hurts.'"

With that, Perkins was on the cusp of making the choice that, in the mind of former Hog star and Irish Olympian Alistair Cragg, is paramount to success on the collegiate level. "If I think of the other most successful college coaches, I think of Vin Lananna, and Mark Wetmore, and even Jerry [Schumacher]," Cragg says. "Their kids are pretty mature, and they've given in to the system, and I think that's definitely key in college. They've all got great athletes, and you're never more important than the guy next to you on any of those teams."

The Arkansas System

In 1973, following his first year at the helm of the Razorbacks, McDonnell returned to his native Ireland and visited the home of Niall O'Shaughnessy, at the time a lightly recruited 1:55 half-miler from the farming village of Adare, and made him his one -- and only -- scholarship offer. Though neither O'Shaughnessy nor his parents so much as knew where Arkansas was, O'Shaughnessy says his parents "could see McDonnell was a man of character, and that swayed the decision to allow me to come over."

O'Shaughnessy would prove to be the catalyst for McDonnell. Though he entered Arkansas having never run beyond 3 miles and with no intentions of running beyond the half-mile, he responded to McDonnell's strength-based program and departed with the still-standing school record in the indoor mile (3:55.4, 1977) and a seventh-place finish at the 1976 NCAA cross country championships to his credit.

Though McDonnell himself was a many-time Irish champion with bests of 8:48 for 2 miles and 13:46 for 3 miles, he credits O'Shaughnessy with demonstrating the champion's temperament that would guide his future recruiting.

McDonnell remembers a stretch in 1977 when O'Shaughnessy ran 3:55 in the mile, followed the next week by the school's second-fastest 1,000-yard race run to date. Two weeks later, McDonnell asked O'Shaughnessy if he would like to race Illinois' Craig Virgin, the preeminent collegiate runner at the time (who would later become a world cross country champion) at 2 miles, a distance he hadn't raced before. "He had such a fantastic approach," McDonnell recalls. "He just shrugged his shoulders and said, 'It's just another race, isn't it?' He ran 8:34 in that 2-mile, and beat Virgin."

O'Shaughnessy, "like a magnet," attracted the next generation of Razorback stars, McDonnell says; just as importantly, his high-mileage training allowed him to shine year-round -- in cross country, indoor, outdoor, as well as the Irish summer season -- and provided McDonnell with the template around which his training would evolve.

For the next 30 years, generations of Razorback runners have run derivatives of this model, chasing O'Shaughnessy and the standard he set under McDonnell's care.

Meat and Potatoes

Though Lydiard was an early beacon -- "I liked his philosophy that strength was speed, and that's what I still do." -- McDonnell found the periodization Lydiard espoused to be incompatible with the collegiate system, which required qualifying for and competing in championships from September to June. In order to have the same guys competing for national titles all three seasons, McDonnell had to innovate. His answer to peaking for all three, counterintuitively, was to peak for none. It worked for Daniel Lincoln, a four-time national champion for the Hogs and the American record-holder in the steeplechase. "He would tell us: 'Running is running. If you're in good shape you'll be able to do any of that,'" Lincoln says.

McDonnell admits he's never put a lot of emphasis on the indoor season, instead using it to rebuild strength after the cross country season and prepare for the outdoor season. "You know, guys run good off of strength," he says. "A lot of people think to win national championships you have to run speed all the time; you don't have to. Speed work is much more demanding on your legs."

Accordingly, the McDonnell training diet varies little from September to June. A typical week includes four elements: 20 x 400 "for leg cadence and rhythm," which typically are run slower, with about 45 seconds rest, in the fall, and faster, with longer rest, in the spring; 8 miles and circuit training; repeat miles or 2 miles in fall or a ladder from 1,200 down in spring; and a Saturday long run of 14 miles. The ladder typically starts at mile pace and gets faster from 400 meters on down. "With short recoveries they get strength and speed at the same time," McDonnell says. "Some people say you can't mix it, but I mix it, and it worked very good."

On paper, it's simple. The plan has changed little; the logs of all of his past harriers, in three-ring binders in his office, have given him a reference from year to year and served as an invaluable resource as he's tweaked the plan. If there is a surprise, it's that as we re-enter an era of high mileage, McDonnell has bucked the trend. His harriers typically run 70 to 80 miles per week with a weekly long run of 14 miles; 15 years ago those figures were 100 to 120 miles per week and 18 miles, respectively.

McDonnell's ability to get more from less since O'Shaughnessy's day can be likened to a seasoned pro playing what former Razorback Frank O'Mara, a two-time indoor world champion over 3,000 meters and a 3:51 miler, calls "percentage tennis." In other words, many people know the proper ingredients, but what helped separate McDonnell from the pack is that he figured out the recipe early, and made continuous minor refinements along the way. "It's not extremely technical," says Lincoln, "but it's experience-based. If you just try and fit in and do what he tells you to, he knows what those workouts translate into on the track later on."

McDonnell's Magic

But to distill McDonnell's success to the figures is to miss the magic completely. The Hogs have won more championships than any collegiate team in history because McDonnell created a culture of excellence that emphasizes the system over the individual. O'Mara calls McDonnell "a master of man management." He always held his runners accountable at conference and national meets, announcing at team meetings before championships how many points each runner was responsible for, and then circling back to see what went wrong if individuals didn't score according to form.

Moreover, McDonnell fostered an ultra-competitive environment where every single day runners were gunning for excellence. "It was a matter of never letting myself have an excuse," Lincoln says. Adds Cragg, "There are so many good guys that no day is easy, but if today is your day to hurt the guy next to you, you do it, because tomorrow he's going to do the same thing back to you." McDonnell would never actively encourage teammates going at each other, "but if he saw it," says Cragg, "you could see his eyes glow -- it's just him, his aura is so strong." This translated to races. Talk to the legends across the generations, like O'Mara and Cragg, and in their biggest moments, in the biggest races, they were thinking, above all else, of not letting the great man down.

From O'Shaughnessy to the present, McDonnell forged champions by relying on a few basic principles. And perhaps his greatest gift has been his ability to stay current, to inspire new groups of freshmen each fall by deciding not to change with the times. And for all the superstars -- the Joe Falcons, Reuben Reinas, O'Maras, Craggs, and Lincolns -- there are men like Perkins, who struggled until they submitted to his principles and then flourished.

Perkins stuck with the stars on that day back in late 2004, and later that year broke through, running huge PRs of 7:56 for 3,000 meters and 3:38 for 1500 meters. More importantly, he scored in both the 2005 indoor and outdoor NCAA championships for the national champion Razorbacks, joining the long scarlet line of athletes who helped McDonnell win an astounding 42 NCAA team titles and become, simply, the best there ever was.